How to use Type / Text with Photoshop Gradients Tutorial

How to use Photoshop gradients with type / text in many different ways tutorial

Type / text fills

Use the Photoshop gradients in type / text fills in Adobe ® PS. Create a new document and then fill the document with a gradient using linear mode or radial and perhaps combine multiple applications of that preset or another GRD via the preset tool and use blending modes such as difference to create all kinds of super colorful backgrounds for your type.

You can also modify the color of any generated background by using tools such as adjustments and plugin tools such as camera raw filter. You can select the background (ctrl A) and then type some text using the horizontal type masking tool to create a selection from the type.

The above is the background and below, the type has been turned into a selection and the pasteboard has been pasted via the paste special command.

Adding layer styles

Create some text / type and go to the layer menu and Photoshop styles / layer styles command and select the GRD overlay and set either a pre-defined preset such as 'foreground to transparent' or perhaps select one of the other GRD files included in the list or perhaps check out the selection on this site or other sites (there are 32,000 different presets available in one amazing super cheap bundle on this site - all by this site) or just create your own using the stops and colors. With the latest version of CC you can now add multiple overlays using the '+ to add an additional preset overlay and you can then using blending modes within the layer styles dialog to create all kinds of super colorful items and these can also be saved to the styles panel as well as stored in the CC libraries for future use. You can also duplicate the type layer and then combine those in many different ways with the first layer. You can also convert the combined overlay and characters into a smart object via the smart object command in the layer menu and then combine the color effects with smart filters as well as smart adjustments. The smart object approach is also useful if you wish to add a quick extrusion with the type and overlay.

The above example shows the use of the overlay added once.

The item below shows the conversion of the object into a smart object via the convert to smart object command in the layer menu. The smart object can have smart filters and adjustments added. You can also just combine the artwork with the background via the flatten command and then add brush strokes and other effects to the type such as below adding color LUT adjustments

Text and blending modes

Create text and flatten and then apply a Photoshop gradient using a blending mode such as lighten on top of the type. You can use any of the presets as well as any of the blending modes and perhaps opacity etc as well as perhaps combine with effects to create all kinds of super colorful type effects with the presets.

Or use other modes such as darken but they all depend on the actual GRD and also the color of the type itself as well as the background. Darken can be useful for creating all kinds of weird distortions to the color of the text

Using the fill content layers

You can also add a gradient to the type via the fill content and layer menu. You can use the layer on top of the type layer and use it with blending modes or opacity or any transparency included in the fill content layer. You can use more than one fill content layer and change the position of the origin as well as type such as radial, angle etc

Adding them as a pattern

You can also turn a GRD preset into a pattern though it is unlikely to be seamless, if you add the preset to a very large document and then define that as a tile then it can be easily used with the text as well. Open a document (make it 2000 x 2000 etc) and then select the tool from the toolbar and apply to the current background (black or white etc) and then re-apply using blending modes. Use the edit menu to define as a pattern and then select some type and use the above methods such as fill content layer or perhaps layer styles etc to add the tile. One advantage of the pattern approach is that you can use it with the paint bucket tool (select the pattern option) and then you can add the color to the individual letters with different presets.

Another option is to use the radial mode and avoid touching the seams so the circles etc are only in the center of any image and do not touch the edge of the defining document. You can also then use multiple radial color effects with blending modes such as darken or difference to combine the presets and the results can then also be defined as a new pattern. The pattern can then be re-scaled etc as required. The results of all these tiles can also be saved as a PNG file and then opened and used in tools such as Affinity Photo via the bitmap fill option in the gradient tool. The same approach can also be used in other tools though the actual terminology may change.